Look! I Made Cookies

“Dad, what are you making?”
“Cookies”
“Can I help?”

This was a familiar refrain in our house, and anyone with children can probably relate. You also know that “help” was a generous descriptor of reality. With the ingredients already laid out, oven on, and most items measured, “help” meant pour in the chocolate chips, mix a little and then scoop out 3 or 4 oddly shaped cookies before declaring the suddenly urgent need to go to the washroom. The assistant cook would only re-emerge after clean-up was complete, dishes put away and the cookies had cooled sufficiently so that one could sample, for quality assurance purposes. Then, after dinner, when it was time for dessert, the now self-declared head baker would ask, “Would you like a cookie that I made?”.

Now that my children are older and more capable, they do venture into the kitchen and make a batch of cookies on their own now and then (clean-up still done by their now demoted assistant baker). However, the other day as I set out to make banana bread the familiar refrain was heard, “What are you making? Can I help?”. Then after a few minutes of watching the stand mixer do its thing, the child suddenly realized they had a more pressing matter to attend to. But when it came time for dessert though, it was the delicious banana bread that she “made” that was served.

As I considered this coup d’état of my baking, I began to think of the claims I make about my faith. “I made a decision. I came to faith. I have grown in my faith. I found Jesus, (he was after all the one who was lost, one only finds lost things)” and the like.

Yet when it comes to issues of faith, most all of it is the work of God and God alone. Salvation is entirely God’s work and his grace to us all. All we must do is awaken to it. Or as Jesus puts it, “the blind see and the deaf hear”. We are passive recipients of his work of salvation, his incarnation, crucifixion, resurrection, love, and grace.

Sanctification too is God’s work and his grace in us. We must accept it. Though in this, like my toddler baking assistant, we are mildly active participants. That is, we can choose to work with God in it or, refuse and rebuff the gift of his work.

Or to put another way, salvation is like being born, it happens to us, we do nothing to help it or achieve it. Sanctification is like living, it happens with us. Yes, much of our living life happens outside of us and beyond our control, where we are born, too whom we are born and so on, but there is still a level, an important level, of participation and decisions we make which affect our living life.

But it is important to keep another point in mind with this metaphor. I did not actually need the help of my child to make the cookies. I chose to let them participate, but I could have handled the pouring in of the chocolate chips on my own. So too God. While not requiring our help to do anything he wishes to do concerning salvation, justification, or sanctification, chooses to invite us to participate in it. And, like a good Father, does not mind sharing the credit for the creation or even losing top billing at times. Even though he did all the prep work, 99 percent of the measuring and mixing and all the clean up. “Yes, Tommy, look what you did with your life and how you have grown in your faith. Well done thou good and faithful servant”.

It ought to be noted that there is an arrogance in my metaphor, claiming that I was actually the one to make the cookies. I may have mixed the ingredients together and scoped the dough on to the baking sheet, but I did nothing to produce the eggs I used, I did not churn the butter never mind produce the milk. I did not mill the flour; I did not plant the grain, and I certainly did not create the grain which was planted. And let’s be honest when it comes to cooking and baking, for the most part, the greatest amount of time and energy spent, is done by the oven or stove (which I also had no hand in making). So, when I declare, “look at the banana bread I made”, I am really no more than a child who poured in the chocolate chips then ran off before any of the hard work had to be done.

And so it is with our faith in God. Even that which we think we can lay claim to, we really cannot. We no more choose God or accept Christ than we actually “make cookies”. All the real work is far beyond our control or doing. It is the mysterious work of Christ, the wooing of the Holy Spirit, and the loving nature of the Father. At most we look at what is around us and cobble together something which by the very nature of the ingredients themselves, mixed with heat and time, all come together to form something wonderful beyond our imagination.

Dear Jesus,

What are you making in me? Can I help? Just tell me what to do and when to stop. I promise I will listen this time and not run off before the work is done.

Thanks